Virtualization technology is most popular in the server world, virtualization technology is also being used in data storage such as Storage Area Networks. Virtualization allows users to consolidate physical resources, simplify deployment and administration, and reduce power and cooling requirements.
In the virtualization or clouds era, people should Forget the desktop. The future of computing is in your browser. Now, the convergence of the next set of things are going to impact the Web, which the cloud and mobile are changing the structure of the Web and therefore the vantage point–the browser–as your gateway. But the architecture of a mobile client coupled with a big back end in the cloud applied to the desktop is changing everything as well. Because browsers I think generally are becoming thinner and lighter at the core with the extensibility that we talked about before around the Mozilla.
Now it’s the browser on whatever device it might be. It might be your mobile handset. It might be your PC. It might be your Apple, your Mac. But in all cases you have a lot of flexibility now to connect to a gigantic computing resource. So if you think about what the desktop was and is still to some extent today as a foundation of what the browser–the use case–what the browser will displace. So on a typical, let’s say, a PC platform that the largest volume application probably is Microsoft Office. So what do you have in there? You have an e-mail client. You have a word processing package. You have a way to make presentations or documents. You have a contact manager, calendaring device.
If you think about what a browser is in the new world that might in the browser case be a tabbed browser where you can click on one click like you would click on Microsoft Office to open it. With one click now under a group tab you can open up a spreadsheet, like, you know, Google’s spreadsheet or Google Docs. Or, you know, word processing or a calendar. All those things now come with one click on a Web interface that used to be a multi-hundred dollar, thousand dollar software package per unit from Microsoft. So it’s going to be a different world.
In 2009, the cloud went from a vague concept to a must-have technology. It’s always fun to watch the emergence of new IT trends and how quickly concepts and products evolve in the early stages. Never was this truer than with cloud computing and what the industry witnessed around its evolution. Over the past year, cloud computing has captured significant attention of CEOs, CIOs and IT personnel alike, as businesses began to investigate the value of moving certain workloads to a cloud model. Facing mounting pressures to provide better services quickly, while reducing costs, many IT decision makers found the economics and capabilities of cloud compelling. Here are a few significant highlights:
Over the past year, companies from markets ranging from financial services to retail executed proofs of concepts and pilots of both public and private clouds. This wide-spread experimentation has matured the usage of private clouds, and in many cases, has become the primary focus for most enterprises. In fact, based on IBM research, we know that a private cloud is more likely to be seen as appealing to clients than public clouds (64% vs. 30%.) Private clouds take the concepts and technologies leveraged by large cloud-based service providers, and applies them to internal data centers. This entails pooling of resources, leveraging virtualization and delivering IT services via dynamic provisioning and a self-service portal.
The results of a private cloud model are astonishing. For workloads such as pre-production test systems, clients of IBM have seen eight-month return on investments and have cut overall IT expenses by up to 60%. Much of these savings comes from improved utilization of resources brought about by virtualization and resource pooling. But the real advantage of cloud comes in labor savings. A well-defined private cloud can deliver certain IT services for 20% or less of the labor required in traditional IT delivery models.
Most cloud service providers had proprietary interfaces for requesting resources and/or running on their cloud infrastructure. This has changed over the course of the year, especially with the concepts of open standards and open source emerging as vitally important to the success and stability of cloud computing.
A key event in the opening of the cloud was the publishing of the Open Cloud Manifesto in March 2009. The purpose of the manifesto was to spell out the key elements of an open system and to push for these elements to be present in the emerging world of cloud computing.
The Open Cloud Manifesto stresses the following:
–Cloud vendors should work together to define open solutions to address cloud challenges like security, integration and interoperability.
–Cloud providers should not use their market position to create vendor lock-in.
–Cloud vendors should embrace existing standards where they apply, and work together to create new standards where required.
–Cloud community efforts should always be customer-driven.
–Cloud standards groups need to stay coordinated to ensure there are not competing open standards in this emerging area.
Since the introduction of the manifesto and its associated Web site, there are now close to 300 supporters of the initiative.
This is only the beginning. There are now numerous efforts underway to standardize on key elements of the cloud computing model–APIs, data formats and protocols, for example. The Web site reveals an impressive list of efforts currently underway.
The evolution of cloud computing is somewhat reminiscent of the dawning of the Internet age back in the ’90s. Remember when we all said we would never put our credit card numbers on the Internet? Well, those days are long gone; most of us have several Web vendors with whom we entrust our personal information, because online security has matured.
Cloud computing is following a similar path. Although few are ready to move mission-critical or sensitive applications to the cloud, enterprises are starting to embrace public cloud service providers as part of their overall IT strategy. Public clouds offer the opportunity to offload certain workloads from the enterprise data center ,creating flexibility in space utilization, people utilization and capital utilization.
Today, the workloads moving to the public cloud include pre-production systems, collaboration software, batch analytics and virtual desktop images. As the security and reliability guarantees of public cloud service providers improve, more workloads will be ready for this type of outsourcing. IBM, for example, is focused on providing the same level of SLA assurances that enterprises hold themselves to. It won’t be long before we start seeing production and other mission-critical workloads out on the public cloud.
This year was a key year for cloud computing. At the beginning of 2009, most of the discussion around cloud was definitional in nature: What is cloud and how can it help me? By year end, much has changed; most of the discussion is around economics and how best to leverage cloud computing technologies.
A new layer of software, typically running in a far-off data center, tricks users into thinking they are using a desktop PC like before. It used to be that something virtual wasn’t real. And that clouds were just that–those puffy things in the sky. Today we have the tech industry terms “virtual computing” and “cloud computing,” which often get mixed up. Fortunately, there’s an easy way to tell them apart, and it involves hearkening back to the age-old distinction between hardware and software. When you’re talking about virtual computing, you’re invariably talking about hardware; specifically, making PC-style hardware available to users in a new way. A new layer of software, typically running in a far-off data center, tricks users into thinking they are using a desktop PC like before.
Cloud computing, by contrast, usually refers to the sorts of software that run once a computer gets turned on. The “cloud” indicates that the software is hosted in a data center, not sitting on your desktop. If you use Google Docs instead of Microsoft Office for your word processing or spreadsheets, that’s cloud computing. You can mix and match these two approaches, undertaking cloud computing on a nonvirtual, traditional PC. And the opposite: You can use traditional, Office-style programs on a virtual PC.
Some applications will be better off running on internal networks. So what better place to look at how data management is changing? Forbes caught up with John Engates, Rackspace’s chief technology officer, to talk about the evolution and where things are likely to go in the future.
We started with Linux servers. Windows came later for us. Today what’s different is that we do it for much larger customers and we manage a much broader set of applications. For all of them we manage up to just under the application, including data center network servers, operating systems, databases and application servers.
Customers bring all kinds of applications to us, but what’s underneath those applications is common among our customers. It’s the same flavors of Windows or Linux or the same hardware platforms and storage platforms. We work with the customers to support those applications, so it’s an extension of their IT operation. There is obviously some gray area in between. We’ll work with the customers to make it work and will bring in whoever it takes and sort out the problem.
Paying by the hour for CPUs or by the gigabyte for storage are necessary financial models. Companies are trying to take advantage of that. Sometimes it’s hard because the applications aren’t written that way, but more and more they are being architected like that.
Our customers traditionally have looked at infrastructure-as-a-service, so they’ve had administrative access to the applications. What’s next is moving up the stack to offer platform-as-a-service. It’s between the infrastructure and the application. A business could take a platform and build their tools right on that instead of worrying about the underlying infrastructure. This is targeted more at a developer instead of a systems administrator.
An automobile, motor car or car is a wheeled motor vehicle used for transporting passengers, which also carries its own engine or motor. There are approximately 600 million passenger cars worldwide roughly one car per eleven people.
Most automobiles in use today are propelled by gasoline (also known as petrol) or diesel internal combustion engines, which are known to cause air pollution and are also blamed for contributing to climate change and global warming. Increasing costs of oil-based fuels, tightening environmental laws and restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions are propelling work on alternative power systems for automobiles. Efforts to improve or replace existing technologies include the development of hybrid vehicles, and electric and hydrogen vehicles which do not release pollution into the air.
It could be a classic auto car that could be restored to its original condition. If you’re interested in finding out if it is a classic, do some research on the internet. There you will find many different classes of classic auto cars right now. We have classic muscle cars which are for those who love speed. Another type of classic model are classics that were never mass produced but where only shown at past car shows. There are antique classic cars which are the really old cars, from the early nineteenth century like Fords.
Don’t worry a classic car collector already knows the value of your classic car, so don’t think you can put one over on him. The old classic auto cars have a personality all their own. If you can help someone restore one of these cars by selling it to them at a good price.
When choosing a car there are many variables that you must consider including make, model, style, color, options, tires, etc. It is after you have chosen the car that you must contend with the thing that stands between you wanting it and you owning it - the price. The best way to buy a car is with cash in hand or your car loan already in order. This is the only way to ensure that you will not be oversold or out-negotiated on the auto sales floor. Most times, people go looking for a vehicle before they look for the loan and they get their financing through the dealership. As common as this is, it is actually the opposite of what you should be doing in order to get the best deal.
The best way to buy a car is to have your financing approved ahead of time. Car salespeople have a lot of tricks they use to build fees and commissions into the price of your car. If you tell them where you want your monthly payment to be, they may try to tack on a few extra dollars each month by adding to your principal amount. The money that is added to your principal is all dealership commissions. That few extra dollars you are paying each month could amount to thousands of dollars in commissions. The problem is, as soon as you drive off of the lot, your car is worth thousands less than your loan amount.
At this time auto car dealers are having a credit crunch too, after a few years of booming car sales, the financial market is hurting them badly.
At the moment it is the same as in the property market, it is a buyer’s market and auto car dealers are very aware of it, as a buyer you don’t have to wait for the end of the month to get the best deals, any time will do.
If you are fortunate enough to be able to buy your new or used car from an auto car dealer, you will find yourself spoilt for choice and if you stay strong in the bartering bit you can surprise even yourself with the savings, extras, you can achieve.
But for auto car dealers therein lies the problem, not nearly enough of us are in the market for a new or used car, manufactures have created a problem for themselves, thank goodness I might add, it is this: Cars made over the last 10 years or so are very, very reliable, so in buyer’s terms, if it ain’t broke, why change it?
Like many industries at this credit crunch time, auto car dealers are right in the thick of it, jobs might be lost or saved in the ‘city’, but jobs will only be lost in this area, car makers have already laid workers off, down numbered the number of shifts, slowed, even stalled production on some vehicles, it is a worrying time for far too many families.
If you own any type of vehicle, then car insurance is something you really should be investing in. For many car owners, it isn’t as choice as car insurance coverage in mandatory in many states and in europe. There are two types of car/auto insurance coverage - full coverage and liability. Full coverage auto insurance means that the vehicle is covered regardless of who is at fault when there is an incident. Liability auto/car insurance only covers the cost of the other vehicles involved when you are liable for the accident. While full coverage auto insurance costs a some times a lot more, it does offer you the best protection all round. and is the most populer
I addition to helping cover the cost of getting your vehicle repaired or replaced, many auto/car insurance policies assist with the cost of medical bills associated with the vehicle accident. This is very important coverage to have, especially if you don’t happen to have health insurance coverage. The cost of auto/car insurance depends on a variety infact lots of factors.
Another way to have a car is from auction. Have a look at the government auto auctions information about which you can find information online. Either most of these cars are returned back to the owner or the owner himself comes up and gets the car released after parting with a penalty. In some cases, however the car remains in the possession of the local authorities who have confiscated the car. After waiting for a stipulated period and after trying to get in touch with the owner of the vehicle if the government finds that the owner does not want to reclaim the vehicle, the car is put up for sale through the government auto auctions.
You will get some of the best deals in these government auto auctions. You may find the car of your choice and all these cars are generally certified to be clear of all legal hassle so that the new owner does not have to go through all the legal formalities once again. In addition, the previous owner cannot put a claim on the car because by law he would not be entitled to the car once again. These auto auctions are the best place to look for some of the best ownership options if you want to get an almost brand new car at a throwaway price. These dream cars are equipped with all the gadgetry and accessories that match the interiors of the vehicle and are optional attachments.
Of course, in the end, you may buy a “certified” used car anyway. These days it seems there are fewer and fewer used cars that aren’t “certified.” Just make sure to get an independent inspection and an independent used car extended warranty. “Certified” or not, it’s still a used car.
Worst of all, certified used cars come with an expensive risk. They tempt you to let your guard down. Ford even issued a press release headlined “Pre-Owned Vehicle Program Reduces Customer Buyer Beware.” As if that were a good thing.
The frigid Brooklyn night disappears as Josh Clark takes me down into the warm, wooden bowels of a former warehouse, a warren of studios and lofts on the edge of Park Slope, where he and his colleague, Charles Burst, have built the Seaside Lounge. The recording studio, patronized by musicians such as Obits, The New Pornographers, Neko Case and Ted Leo, is also a portal to the sound of the past–in the form of a 3M 16-track analogue tape recorder that once belonged to rock god Eddie Van Halen.
Clark, who is 32, tall, lean and, like many men in Brooklyn of a certain age, bearded, talks eloquently and lovingly of his 16-track as a marvel of machined technology and about the tinkering he has to do each week, given that it is composed of so many moving parts. But he is not a curator, and this isn’t a museum: the 3M is the studio’s flagship machine because in the age of digital sound, analogue is rich, detailed, wondrous–and as Clark puts it, “exciting.”
It may be odd to hear a 32-year-old describe himself as a bridge to the age of analogue, a quaint era of gears and levers and screws, and yet many of the musicians who use the Seaside Lounge will have grown up listening only to the tapeless, ethereal sounds of binary code. This gap between kids who grew up with the Internet, says Clark, and those–only marginally older–who grew up with hi-fi is huge. “No one sits down in front of good speakers anymore, no one cares about buying gear for life,” and, sometimes, he thinks, no one born after 1985 is ever going to sit or care as people once did or now do in dwindling minorities. Nevertheless, even those musicians who arrive knowing only the sound of digital are open to being wowed by the possibilities of analogue.
I wanted to see the 16-track because I have been wondering about the gap between the rhetoric and the reality of the digital revolution we are so often reminded is taking place, with or without our assent. And I was thinking specifically about sound after cracking open The Chaos Scenario, a recent addition to the library of “what does the Internet mean for media and what to do about it” by NPR’s On the Media cohost and Advertising Age editor-at-large, Bob Garfield. Garfield has a complex thesis, dubbed “listenomics,” which he wanted to use as the book’s title except, except–as he notes in the introduction–he “was preempted by Wikinomics and freakin’ Freakonomics, two fine books that went all ‘-omic’ on the publishing world before I got a chance to.”
Listenomics, according to Garfield, is responsible for the “death of everything,” and everything’s reimagining in a “New World Order,” where the herd of consumers will be heard and in order to influence consumers one must give up influence. Inevitably, such claims offer much to argue with on almost every page of Chaos Scenario, not least with what Garfield calls the “pod people” and what they are doing:
Surely you’ve noticed them, on the subway or at the gym, all those folks milling about with little white buds in their ears. This is not a hygiene problem. This is a prima fascie [sic] evidence of the ongoing revolution. These people may seem placid enough, but as they pump away at the elliptical machine or stare into the middle distance avoiding eye contact with their fellow straphangers, they are actually storming the Bastille. As they privately groove to digital recordings … they are simultaneously dismantling the Old Word Order. Thanks to the iPod, the record business and commercial broadcast radio are in extremis.”
The book is dense with passages like this, well written but sometimes verging on the obtuse through overwriting: who, precisely, are the readers puzzling over the ubiquity of iPods, and how old must they be to have missed the Sony Walkman era? The more important question, of course, is whether the economic woes of big music’s Bastille are terminal or just temporal–accidents of technology that may be reversed through newer technology. As Zhou Enlai said of the French Revolution, “it is too early to say.”
For what is really startling about the revolution in music is that the “pod people” are not just keeping vinyl alive and sales steady, or going to live concerts and nurturing micromusical climates at a local level. They also have altered one of the basic principles of rock ‘n’ roll in a way that might bode well for the future economics of the music business: They like their parents’ music.
Paul Rachman, director of American Hardcore, a terrific history of the homegrown American punk movement, noticed this when he was doing the promotion for his documentary: The kids didn’t just want to talk about punk, and they didn’t talk at all about contemporary music; they wanted to talk about Led Zeppelin and ZZ Top and AC/DC. He then noticed that his friends’ teenage kids were playing old classic rock, and that videogames such as Guitar Hero were composed of classic rock songs, marketing them, in effect, to a generation bereft of the kind of supergroups created by the massive advertising budgets of the past. Confirmation that he wasn’t simply imagining this trend came from Terry Stewart, president of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, who told him that for the first time in history of rock, parents and teenagers were not in rebellion about their music; they were in agreement.
What does the craving for classic rock supergroups mean for “listenomics?” It means a certain kind of music is valuable. For Rachman, who is working on a documentary series with the working title of “lost rockers”–those who almost made it huge–it means that we’re in a transitional period, where the business models to exploit this value are being rebuilt. What it doesn’t mean is that kids will never pay for music.
The point is this: Much of what is theorized about the behavior of consumers in a digital age takes place in a temporal fug, where contingent practices–don’t pay, won’t pay–take on the adamantine quality of laws handed down by God; but just because something starts one way doesn’t mean that it is bound to continue on the same course, immutable and unyielding to change.
We may have traded the convenience of musical portability for a staggering loss in audio quality, a leap backwards that might be compared with taking away Raphael’s paints and giving him an Etch-a-Sketch. But at the same time, revolutions create people like Clark and spaces like the Seaside Lounge: people and places that mediate between technologies and eras, and in doing so draw attention to what might be lost and what should be preserved. They all have the power to alter the seemingly linear path of revolution.
Garfield’s Chaos Scenario is, perhaps, best interpreted as a scientific metaphor for nonlinearity, where the multiple inputs of an open-source crowd tempt us with determinable outcomes but, in fact, yield odd and fascinating unpredictability. One possibility in that unpredictability is that we could eventually return to the past, where we paid for entertainment and preferred the sound produced by tape traveling through an elaborately mechanical box.
Indeed, the complex dynamics of the digital era may give even more power to top-down influence than ever before; after all, the ghost of marketing budgets past is still alive and kicking–and clearly able to deliver what the kids want: epic music. Who could have predicted that this digital era would bring about concord between musical generations, uniting rather than dividing parents and teenagers–at least until a new generation of supergroups and epically marketed rock sunders them again?
